The Story So Far
by Beastbot X
Summary: Forgotten key details? Missed a fic here and there? Want to delve into my series head-first without reading the previous two seasons? You're in luck! This is a handy summary guide for the first half, Seasons 5 & 6, of my X-Men: Evolution series.


"The Story So Far"

by Beastbot

Particularly with my more recent fanfics, I've had some questions about what exactly has happened in my fanfiction series to date—namely, people will read a fic in the middle of my "sixth season", and thus undoubtedly have questions. Although I would encourage people to read my series from the beginning so that everything is addressed, I understand time constraints or people not wanting to read that many fics, as my series is getting rather long and fairly complex at this point.

So, with the sixth season finished and my X-Men: Evolution series now at the planned halfway point, I figured it would be a perfect time to put together a summary of every fanfic up to this point. Any important details are covered in the summaries of the fanfiction below, though some things like minor motivations, etc. are often left out for brevity's sake. So, whether you don't want to read all of my past fanfics and just start "on the ground running", so to speak, or if you just want to brush up on details of fanfics you may have read a lot time ago, here it all is, laid out in a simple format. Given all the interweaving plots and details that might not come up for a while and/or are instrumental as the status quo changes in the fics ahead, many of the details listed here are crucial to understanding the story going forward. So, without further ado:

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**SEASON 5, EPISODE 1: "Fallout, Part I"**

The X-Men are holding a big celebration after their victory over Apocalypse. All of the New Mutants who helped out in the fight against Apocalypse are promoted to full-fledged X-Men, some of them donning new uniforms in the process. Wolfsbane and Jubilee have managed to convince their parents to re-join the X-Men after the worldwide Apocalypse incident—their parents finally saw how important the X-Men were—but are a bit perturbed at still being "lowly" New Mutants. Freed from Magneto's form of blackmail, Colossus has also now joined the X-Men as an instructor, and Moonstar has moved as well, deciding to share a room with her best friend Kitty (and for real this time, not just in a dream). Xavier is having a rather difficult time in spite of the festivities, however, as he is having to deal with the fallout of the visions he received from Apocalypse. Namely, he now knows—or does he?—that Jean, one of his most treasured students, will eventually become the monster known as the Phoenix. Lance shows up, wanting to go out on a date with Kitty, but Kitty refuses, formally breaking up the relationship. Lance is understandably angry and confused, but Kitty says that she thought she could help Lance on the "right path", but that obviously isn't happening. Even though he still knows that a lot of what he's doing is wrong, he's still doing it. A furious Lance reluctantly leaves. Meanwhile, it's revealed that Guy Spear, the maker of Powr-8, has been secretly manufacturing it over the last several months, and is selling it at inflated prices to Bayville residents angry over the near-catastrophe at the hands of Apocalypse, which they see as being the responsibility of all Mutants.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 2: "Fallout, Part II"

A large group of angry Bayville residents have all purchased squirt guns from Toys "R" Us, vowing to stop the groups of local Mutants once and for all as they pour purchased Powr-8 into the toy guns. They decide to hit the Brotherhood of Bayville Boarding House first, and take the Brotherhood by surprise. After Wanda comes out and threatens to use her powers against the gathering mob, she's blasted with Powr-8, which feels like strong acid to Mutants. Thus the fight begins, and after news reports leak out, the X-Men feel obliged to get involved. They arrive on the scene in "hazmat"-like suits soon enough, but the sheer number of people attacking the Brotherhood are overwhelming them. Avalanche, sending repeated tremors through the ground to keep the rioters away, eventually brings the Boarding House crashing down on top of him, though much to his chagrin(?) Kitty saves him from being crushed. The X-Men, along with the arriving police, eventually succeed in driving away the rioters, but Toad, Wanda, and Blob are injured badly from the Powr-8, and the Brotherhood members now have no home. Feeling pity, Xavier pays their hospital bills and gives them money for a month's worth of apartment rent and food—however, after that they will have to get by on their own and get jobs, much to Toad's horror. Meanwhile, federal authorities show up to arrest Guy Spear for his role in the fiasco, but he's already fled the country, and is nowhere to be found.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 3: "Paying the Rent"

Time is running out for the Brotherhood members to find a job. With none of them willing to take the initative, they eventually force Toad to get one—with horrific results. So, instead of a job, Pietro comes up with an idea for the Brotherhood to start stealing money again—only this time, posing as the defunct Bayville Sirens. After donning the appropriate costumes, all of the Brotherhood members minus Blob start to rob various Bayville banks, and word starts to spread that the Sirens are back and have "gone bad". The Brotherhood members manage to convince guards of this by having Wanda be the only member to get close to alerted guards, while the rest of them stay in the background, looting the banks. Eventually, however, due to a combination of Caliban's help and the Brotherhood's crime spree pattern becoming predictable, the real Sirens trap the Brotherhood with them inside a bank vault, and promptly mop the floor with them. Now in jail for theft, Avalanche gets a phone call from "his lawyer" who turns out to be Mystique. Though angry, she tells Lance to make sure they stay put in the jail until she comes and retrieves them, as she's "busy" right now, but she WILL come eventually.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 4: "Omega Alert"

Magneto breaks into a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison containing Omega Red (real name Arkady) and frees the skeptical Mutant criminal. Omega Red is at first unwilling to go with Magneto, until the Acolyte leader mentions one word—Wraith. Later we see Omega Red at Magneto's base, having just finished killing Wraith with his own bare hands. Apparently Magneto and his remaining Acolytes had gone to a lot of trouble to track down Wraith, a Mutant who apparently had some past with Omega Red, Wolverine, and the other members of the Weapon X project, and whose power enabled him to turn invisible. Hungry for more, Omega Red asks where Wolverine and "Maverick" are—Magneto is unable to tell him where the latter is, but will let him know where Logan is in return for Arkady's loyalty. Omega Red agrees, deciding that the opportunity to kill two and possibly three of his fellow Weapon X-ers outweighs his want to kill Sabretooth. Meanwhile, Wolverine is overseeing a Danger Room training session where the newest recruits are trying to down a Sentinel—it doesn't go so well. Xavier asks Logan what his plans are for the next day, wanting him to do another Danger Room session, but Logan says that he has "plans", neglecting to mention what they are. It turns out that he was planning a bit of a "socialization" visit with X-23 at a local Italian eatery, as he was worried about the girl out in the wilderness and invited her into town for a real meal. Sabretooth and Omega Red crash the party, and with some effort steal from X-23 a shard of the gem of Cyttorak, the crystal Magneto used to super-evolve Mutants in "The Cauldron". Apparently X-23 had visited the Asteroid M ruins a while ago, and Magneto knew of this and wanted it back so he could rebuild his auto-evolving, mind-altering machine. (Arkady does not know about the mind-altering part.) They manage to escape with it with the help of a nearby Magneto, though Arkady is frustrated he is unable to kill Wolverine. Furious over losing the gem shard, X-23 escapes before Wolverine can convince her to stay.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 5: "Mercury Rising"

Frustrated over Robert Kelly's successful election as mayor of Bayville, the X-Men are interrupted from their sorrow when Xavier telepathically tells them all that a new Mutant has arrived at the Institute. Her name is Cessily Kincaid, AKA Mercury, a 15-year-old girl who underwent a severe mutation recently. After hearing of the X-Men's success at defeating Apocalypse, she and her parents had decided that this was the place for her. Somewhat tall and lithe, she's made completely of a non-toxic form of mercury, and she has a hard time keeping herself looking solid, drips of mercury constantly falling from her body to the ground and then sliding back into her feet to merge with her again in a never-ending cycle. This is tied to her moods—the more nervous she is, the more "liquid-like" she is, and she has relatively large hands and feet and a relatively skinny upper body and arms due to this. She has red, metallic-like hair and no eyes, only eye "detailing" on her silver face. Her powers allow her to do anything a liquid can do, such as squeeze into gaps, alter her form, etc. She stutters often, and is a very uptight individual. She's assigned to a room with Rogue, though Rogue isn't too happy about it after Cessily reveals she's in favor of the Mutant Registration law Kelly is proposing, something Rogue is vehemently against. The rest of the fic is dedicated to her initial fear of being seen in public, and the X-Men reassuring her that they'll be protect her and be her friends should she run into any trouble. It ends with Cessily becoming more confident that the X-Men are indeed her friends after an encounter with a group of bullies, and that joining them was the right decision.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 6: "The Brotherhood Means Business, Part I"

The Brotherhood are getting tired of being stuck in jail, but decline to really do anything about it because of Mystique's earlier phone call insisting they stay in there until the opportune time. Well, the opportune time has arrived—using their powers, Mystique, the newly-recruited Pyro (who despised Magneto's overly rigid rules and quit), and a new teenage mutant girl named Noriko Ashida- AKA Surge- help to free the teenage Brotherhood members from their prison cell, and they all escape through the nearby forest. After they are a safe distance away, Quicksilver takes off, rightfully afraid that Mystique will punish him for his betrayal back in Season Two's "Day of Reckoning". Surge's powers enable her to absorb electricity either slowly from the environment around her, or she can drain an electrical energy source and either use that energy to throw lightning bolts as offensive weapons or instead channel the electrical energy into her nervous system, allowing her to move at vastly superhuman speeds. Draining an entire car battery, she manages to catch up to Quicksilver and knocks him into a nearby river, though she refrains from killing him because Mystique wants Pietro to warn his father of the Brotherhood's resurgence. Wanda also re-learns of her father's treatment of her when she was young, and takes out her anger on Toad, vowing to continue her former quest to kill Magneto. Mystique leads them to a stolen tour bus that they make their escape in.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 7: "The Brotherhood Means Business, Part II"

Mystique and the rest of the Brotherhood stop in an old farming field a few miles from Bayville's outskirts. Blob crushes down the bus to get rid of any evidence, and they enter an old, partially collapsed barn—only there's a secret underground entrance in the barn, which leads to the Brotherhood's new base, which Mystique had apparently spent some time "acquiring" the finances for. Far from being run-down, the base proper is more like a miniature version of the X-Men's lower levels, with some training rooms and some living quarters, all of them quite clean and high-quality. Mystique tells the Brotherhood that they're all expected to train, and train hard—she's going to work them into a force to be reckoned with again, and not merely a joke anymore. During some downtime, we learn about Surge's past—her powers first manifested in her home, in an electrical explosion that killed her parents. On the run from Japanese authorities for homicide, she hadn't yet learned to channel her slowly-building electrical energy, and every few hours would "go nuclear" and take out a fairly large area, which made her easy to track. She was locked up in a cell that was resistant to her powers, though Mystique eventually rescued her and gave her a special pair of mechanical gauntlets that allowed her to store that energy until she needed to use it. As such, she can't take the gauntlets off for a long period of time without going nuclear again. She is utterly loyal to Mystique's cause because of the blue Mutant's help. Mystique's initial plan is to attack one of the cars full of Xavier's students shortly after they leave the Mansion grounds for the airport to get the kids back home for Christmas break. They're successful, and intercept a vehicle containing Colossus, Nightcrawler, Magma, Wolfsbane, Jubilee, Mercury, and Sunspot, forcing it off the road. Through Mystique's direction, the Brotherhood are considerably more focused and adept this time, and though they eventually are defeated, they injure Wolfsbane, Colossus, and Jubilee and give Magma severe burns (via Wanda's hexing). Mystique is about to kidnap Amara as a hostage when Spyke shows up, fending the conscious Brotherhood members off and foiling their plans. Looking at the ruined city block as the Brotherhood manage to escape, however, the X-Men realize that the Brotherhood are no longer the "joke" they once were...

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 8: "Acolytes Part Deux"

Colossus receives his younger sister Illyana's amulet in the mail, without any letter or notice attached. Since his sister never took off that amulet and it is now cracked, it doesn't take him long to figure out that Magneto must have attacked his family in retaliation for his abandonment of the Acolytes. Xavier had assured Colossus that his family was protected, but apparently this wasn't the case, and so Colossus, most of the instructors, and Kitty fly to Russia to try to find out what's happened. As they expect, they run into a trap, and Magneto's new Acolytes attack—consisting of Quicksilver, Mastermind, Omega Red, Sabretooth, and Legion, who has also joined Magneto's band to take revenge against his father. Of particular note is that Mastermind, Omega Red, and Sabretooth have had their powers fully enhanced by Magneto's rebuilt genetic enhancer. Sabretooth now looks like he did in "The Cauldron", Mastermind's illusions are stronger, and Omega Red (mind now more or less "wiped" and no longer focused on his vendetta against Wolverine) now has a "death aura" that can drain the life force of individuals who stay close to him for too long. Legion has also further fragmented, and has two more personalities—Bart, a large bulky male with superhuman endurance and strength; and Emerald, a girl who can create jets of high-pressure water in a manner similar to how Iceman creates ice. Both of them are just as hostile as Lucas. They all battle, and though the X-Men eventually triumph, Magneto holds Illyana hostage, and only releases her after the X-Men agree to let the defeated Acolytes go. Although Colossus is happy to see his sister and mother safe, Magneto already killed his father. No longer content to have his family live halfway around the world, Colossus and the X-Men make plans for his family to emigrate to Bayville.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 9: "Day of Rewinding"

Mayor Kelly has called for an "extensive investigaton" of the X-Mansion, and it's ruining their ability to do anything productive for the time being, as well as making their time there humiliating and aggravating. They still have to put up with it peacefully, though, so that Kelly doesn't have any reason to arrest them. Kurt, sick of it all, calls up Forge and asks if he can spend the night over there, to which Forge readily agrees, though his parents are out of town. Once Kurt arrives at Forge's upscale home, Forge eagerly takes his friend down to the basement to show him his latest invention—a time machine! After Forge demonstrates the machine's effectiveness via some minor horseplay, Kurt comes up with the idea to go back in time to keep Mutants from becoming public knowledge, and thus prevent what the X-Men have dealt with over the last year or two. Forge puts on a helmet to keep him immune to the "memory changes" caused by Kurt's muddling in the past, tells Kurt that he can only be in the past for a fairly short amount of time, hooks both of them up with equipment allowing them to communicate with each other, and then sends Kurt back to the time of the Season 2 finale "Day of Reckoning, Part II", right before Magneto springs his trap. Once Kurt is in the past, he immediately teleports Pietro away from the scene and confronts him. A confused Quicksilver doesn't know how Kurt has figured out his plan, but manages to escape from him via calling in on his dad for backup. On to Plan B, Kurt ports into Trask's facility below the beginning battle above, trying to find and free Wolverine. Trask takes him by surprise and knocks him out, however, forcing Forge to send himself into the past to rescue Kurt. Forge manages to rescue Kurt (injuring himself in the process), but they're out of time, and have to go back to the present, though the time machine is destroyed in the process, as it was only meant to transport one person at a time. A frustrated Kurt and a wounded Forge arrive in the basement just as Storm walks down, wanting Kurt back at the Institute because the police wanted to ask them all additional questions. She finds out what was going on, and reprimands Kurt before they decide to take Forge to the hospital to get his wound sewn up.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 10: "Spyke Jam"

A loud explosion rocks the Morlock headquarters, injuring some of them. None of the Morlocks are able to capture the mysterious intruder before he leaves, but Spyke adamantly chases after him, discovering that it's Gambit before the red-eyed Mutant stops Spyke long enough to make his getaway. Patrols are stepped up, and a few days later, Spyke is told by Scaleface that Callisto and Caliban captured Gambit, and he's needed. He urgently follows Scaleface, only to find the three other Morlocks turn on him and knock him out. When he comes to, he's in a small chamber with the other Morlocks and Gambit, thoroughly confused as to what's going on. It's revealed that Mesmero is behind all this, and all of this was merely a way to get Spyke captured and subdued. He wants Spyke to help him, and although Evan initially refuses, Mesmero uses Gambit to bring in a knocked-out Rogue and threatens to kill her if he doesn't obey. Mesmero had heard about Kurt's recent time escapade, and wanted knowledge about the time machine so he could use it to enter temporal limbo and bring Apocalypse back. Spyke manages to escape his bonds and incapacitate Callisto, Caliban, and Gambit long enough to turn his spikes on Mesmero, forcing him to let go of his mental control over the others. Gambit, tired of being enslaved by Mesmero, uses his powers on the tattooed Mutant and Mesmero explodes, dead, much to the chagrin of Spyke, who thought they could have used Mesmero for information. Asked why he's here, Gambit responds that New Orleans hasn't been the same since Hurricane Katrina came through, and he's back in Bayville now. He offers to take Rogue back up the X-Mansion, and Spyke reluctantly accepts, though he keeps an eye on Gambit as he heads off.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 11: "Don't Judge a Mutant by Its Cover"

Xavier is feeling uneasy lately, as his "memories" of the future he gained during the Apocalypse incident are in some cases starting to grow hazy and indistinct, and he's not sure why. He thinks it may be due to Kurt's recent meddling in the timestream, but Kurt insisted he didn't change anything… Meanwhile, Cannonball gets a call from his mom, who reports that his oldest sister, Paige, is missing. Xavier tells Wolverine to go along with Cannonball to help track her down, and Sam's friends Jubilee and Iceman come along, as well. They soon arrive at the Guthrie household in Kentucky, where Sam's friends learn that he has quite a large family, though his father and the rest of his siblings are staying in a hotel while the investigation takes place. Paige's room is empty, save for a broken window and some fairly large pieces of skin. After examining the skin pieces, though, Logan notices they're rather thick and lack any traces of blood—almost like they were shed off. He thinks Paige may be a Mutant, and they track her to a nearby warehouse, where Logan also smells traces of the Brotherhood. Sure enough, despite their vigilance Surge, Pyro, Mystique, and the Scarlet Witch take them by surprise. Paige is also with them, her body a mish-mash of different materials—lava, diamond, acidic slime, wood—that she is slowly but continually shedding to reveal yet more materials underneath, with only a small part of her face still covered in actual human skin. The fight begins, with Paige (having picked the codename Husk) surprisingly going after her brother—apparently she joined the Brotherhood by choice. She was both in extreme pain and angry at God for her mutation, and with Mystique's promises to help, she joined their ranks. After overhearing Mystique talk about her as if she were merely a weapon while the blue Mutant fought Wolverine—and upon seeing that, unconsciously, a small part of her had started to form human skin again, meaning that she could look normal again—she starts to have doubts. Sam tries to prod her along by telling her that this is all still part of a Plan for her life. Eventually everyone is taken down except for Wolverine, who has Mystique at his mercy. It's a stalemate, though, since if he touches her the Brotherhood members will take him down, as well. Paige finally makes up her mind then and upsets the balance of the battle. Their "prize" lost, Mystique orders a retreat as the X-Men recover, and a frazzled but apologetic Paige agrees to come with her brother back to the Institute.

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 12: "Rise of the Robots, Part I"

An important Danger Room session is taking place, with all the new Mutants being "graded" on their performance as individuals. Jubilee and Wolfsbane are having difficulties, but generally manage to overcome their limitations, while Mercury apparently tends to panic under pressure and is doing horribly. Moonstar is frustrated in her inability to use her powers on anything in the Danger Room, feeling utterly useless, and disobeys the rules to help out Wolfsbane, only to become a liability in the process. Paige/Husk, however, is not participating in the Danger Room session yet because she doesn't have full control over her powers (particularly when she's upset) though she is steadily improving in that aspect. Jean and Xavier are studying her powers closely to help her improve. Meanwhile, at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, a Sentinel slowly but surely comes into self-awareness, though no one else is aware of its state. It learns via observing and listening that its creator is Dr. Trask, who is creating a new, better, more compact version of a Sentinel as per Nick Fury's orders. However, unbeknownst to S.H.I.E.L.D., he's installing more advanced hardware than he let on—hardware that can control the other Mark I Sentinels and help him escape from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. However, even Dr. Trask isn't aware of the new Sentinel's level of awareness, as it bypasses the manual "off" switch and continues to observe, unmoving, for days. Per its programming, it recognizes Mutants as a threat, but after watching some heated confrontations between Fury and Trask, comes to the conclusion that humans cannot beat back Mutants—the more logical Sentinels must do it for them. It also, via a communication misunderstanding between two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, takes a name for itself—Nimrod. Eventually, it feels the time is right to reveal itself, and as Fury and Trask argue again in front of it, it raises its arm quickly and fires…

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SEASON 5, EPISODE 13: "Rise of the Robots, Part II"

It was a warning shot, meant to get the human's attention. Nimrod explains his mission and rationale to a bewildered Trask and a furious… Fury, and when they resist, Nimrod activates all the other Sentinels in S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, blasting off into the night sky together. Nimrod's long-range Mutant signature scanners zero in on his intended targets—all of the Mutants in Bayville, the most Mutant-dense city in the world. Nimrod reasons that if he can take out the gathered Mutants there, the ones scattered throughout the rest of the globe should prove to be no problem, and directs his Sentinels to engage when they enter the city limits. As the Sentinels start to engage the various Mutants/Mutant groups, taking them by surprise in the middle of the night, Mayor Kelly is contacted about the situation, but he tells his aides not to let any authorities interfere—even though the Sentinels are damaging Bayville, they are also obviously only targeting Mutants, and he doesn't want humans to get needlessly hurt trying to stop the giant robots. Magneto puts up a tremendous fight against the Sentinels, but Nimrod's power-deactivation field allows him to make short work of any Mutant that can withstand even the might of an army of Mark I Sentinels. One-by-one the Acolytes fall, as do the Brotherhood members (though Surge manages to absorb the electricity from one Sentinel and direct it at several others, killing quite a few of them, though severely draining herself in the process). At the X-Mansion, the last place to get hit, the X-Men have at least a little warning and evacuate the Mansion for fear of it collapsing in on them once the Sentinels arrive. The fight is horribly one-sided as Nimrod enters the fray, however, and despite their best efforts soon all of the X-Men are knocked unconscious, fires raging through the Mansion grounds.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 1: "Lambs to the Slaughter, Part I"

Magneto is the first Mutant to wake up, and to his surprise, he witnesses as, helpless inside a ball of green hardened goo just like all the other captured Mutants, he is carried by Nimrod's Sentinel army overseas and set down inside a pit on a remote abandoned island facility. Magneto causes a small amount of havoc before he is stopped by Nimrod, though it was merely to get the new Sentinel's attention. As the others wake up and break out of their hardened green prisons, Nimrod explains to them that he has kept them all alive because he needs to better himself if he is to eliminate the entire Mutant populace—his neutralization powers cannot work on every Mutant, such as Leech, and thus he needs to calibrate his other systems. So, bizarrely, Nimrod needs them alive in order to fight him and make him more able to fight other Mutants, and thus carry out his task. At first the Mutants protest, but they have little choice—Nimrod will simply kill them unceremoniously if they resist, and gives them 12 hours to rest and recuperate before the "exercises" begin, his Sentinels herding them into an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. facility on the island. While they wait inside the facility, the various Mutants try to bounce ideas off each other, but no real ideas come to the forefront except trying unique power combinations on Nimrod. The forced time in the same room also opened old wounds, metaphorically, and even in the dire situation some are practically at each others' throats. Meanwhile, Pyro and Boom Boom "bond" over their mutual love of recklessness and not really caring what happens. Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, Fury has sent out a bomber plane. He's giving the Mutants only a few hours to down Nimrod, and if his signal still doesn't fade from their scanners, they're nuking the island—Nimrod is too large of a threat to allow to exist, no matter what the cost. Back at the island, the time has finally come, and the fight begins. Every attack fails, and at one particular opportunity when both Sabretooth and Wolverine are bowled over, he remembers Destiny's much-earlier prediction that "One of them shall fall by the other's hands". Sensing his opportunity as Nimrod lashes out at where they just were with a huge plasma blast, Sabretooth grins and kicks a surprised Logan right back into the beam, incinerating his body in seconds as only a sizzling adamantium skeleton comes out the other side…

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 2: "Lambs to the Slaughter, Part II"

Nimrod momentarily stops, confused, looking at Logan's smoking remains as Sabretooth laughs in triumph, X-23 attacks him in anger, the X-Kids panic/grieve/burst into tears at the loss of their mentor (there's no regenerative tissue left for Logan to come back from—he's truly dead), and Magneto reprimands Sabretooth for the attack right now, of all times. Nimrod incinerates Sabertooth for not following the "rules" of the battle, and orders the rest of the Mutants to only attack him or suffer the consequences. The Mutants rejoin the battle, trying various power combinations, but none of them work—and, on top of that, both Cannonball and the Morlock Façade are killed in the attempts, as well. Furious, Husk sheds her skin into a liquid mercury form and she—along with Mercury, who unconsciously is now fairly solid-looking due to her emotional state—attack Nimrod, rapidly changing the solidity of their forms to temporarily penetrate Nimrod's shield and wound him. Nimrod quickly recovers, though, and zaps them both into unconsciousness. It shows that they actually can penetrate Nimrod's force field, though, and Xavier comes up with an idea—target Nimrod's mind, since he's apparently smart enough to have come up with all of this by himself. Given her penchant for creating fearful illusions often without even trying to, Moonstar, to her surprise, is chosen to attack Nimrod's mind. With the help of Lucid and Wanda, Nimrod's shield is taken down just long enough for Moonstar—with great effort, and boosted by all the other psychic's powers- to establish a mental link with Nimrod. By his own "optics", Nimrod suddenly sees his worst fear—all of the Mutants he's killed coming back to life, and his "master" Dr. Trask belittling his creation as they swarm over Nimrod, unable to stop him. Back in the real world, though, Nimrod is simply firing erratically into the air, trying in vain to destroy the imaginary Mutant ghouls. With his defenses down, the Mutants are able to destroy him fairly easily, and just in time—Fury calls off the nuclear strike less than a minute before it's scheduled to happen. Without Nimrod's presence, the Sentinels under his control collapse, in stasis. Before S.H.I.E.L.D. can arrive, Magneto and his remaining Acolytes escape into the ocean in metal spheres made of crushed Sentinel parts. When the S.H.I.E.L.D. helijet does arrive, Mystique, via taking an unconscious Wolfsbane as a hostage, forces the crew to evacuate and her Brotherhood to get away in the helijet instead (though they dump off Wolfsbane as they leave). Juggernaut also slips into the ocean during the commotion, not needing to breathe as he makes his way away from the island. A few hours later, the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier arrives as backup, and the remaining Mutants file in. Xavier is furious at Fury for his part—wittingly or not—in the whole Nimrod fiasco, and for preparing to nuke them all if it had taken just a little longer to kill the new Sentinel. He also—somewhat protectively—takes X-23 into the X-Men's custody, not willing to let Fury take her as some kind of property. (X-23 isn't too happy about it, but goes along with it, given her other options.) Fury does agree to take them back home, but after that he insists S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to disappear anyways for a while to avoid public scrutiny and investigations. As Kitty helps up a just-recovering Moonstar, she notices that suddenly, Moonstar's left eye is emitting a fairly bright beam of light—a fact to which Moonstar seems unaware. As the helicarrier leaves the scene, Magneto's metal spheres emerge out of the ocean, having hid there this whole time, and re-land on the island as the Acolytes get back out. Magneto has plans for this place. Mastermind gathered from Fury's mind that the former S.H.I.E.L.D. base was called Genosha…

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 3: "Minus Two, Plus Twenty-Three"

Most of this fic deals with the funeral service at the X-Mansion following Cannonball and Wolverine's deaths, and the emotional fallout that occurs. Both X-Men are buried at one side of the Mansion, facing the coast. After the service, there is some talk amongst the X-Men about Mayor Kelly's questionable conduct during the Sentinel invasion of Bayville, but given the situation it's generally assumed he'll get away scot-free. Tabitha seems to be harboring a bit more resentment towards him than the others, though. She also seems a bit less affected by the deaths than the other X-Men. Paige is particularly angry and emotional over her brother's death, and essentially blames God, Whom she is starting to doubt even exists. Xavier talks to Cessily about her "transformation" during the battle with Nimrod, where she actually looked fairly solid for a short period of time—even though Cessily is now back to her normal dripping self, this tells him that she can, eventually, overcome this weakness. Kitty later sees Xavier in private, and is heartbroken—she had thought that being an X-Man was what she wanted, but after all this… she's not sure if she can deal with another situation like this again, where people she's lived and fought beside die so suddenly. She isn't sure yet, but she's thinking about leaving after she graduates at the end of the school year. Meanwhile, Moonstar has undergone some tests courtesy of Hank, and he's come to the conclusion that her power to create illusions in other's minds is more a side effect of her power than her actual power. According to Beast's analysis, her ACTUAL Mutant ability is that her body will adapt itself to keep her from dying. Severe trauma has to occur for her ability to manifest itself in new ways, though. That's why she was able to hibernate for so long when they first found her, and apparently when her Mutant powers first surfaced, she was so afraid of others her Mutant powers manifested themselves as her illusory ability. This latest mutation—her left eye emitting a beam of light—is the visual side effect of part of her brain actually converting to an organic silicon, to help her enter and manipulate Nimrod's processor. As a result, she can now easily "read" any machine code and language and manipulate it at her will. She's also become a bonafied X-Man as a result of her recent efforts. Meanwhile, Rogue hears noises coming from Logan's old room, and enters to find X-23 tearing the place apart in anger. Having skipped out on the funeral because she didn't understand what it was for, X-23 looked up what religion was on the Internet, and is now completely confused and angry about what the afterlife is, and what its meaning is for her—after all, since she's a clone, does she even have a soul? She forces Rogue to absorb her memories, to get her to try to understand, and Rogue appears to at least partially feel X-23's emotional pain, which the clone—now unconscious because they touched—had so much trouble expressing in words.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 4: "Need for Speed"

*takes place during "Population Bomb", "Lines in the Sand", and both parts of "Logan's Legacy"*

During a now-rare late-night outing, the teenage Brotherhood members are having a good time stealing snacks when Toad almost gets run over by a speeding car. Luckily, Surge managed to save him just in time as several other sportscars go zooming after the first car—apparently they had just witnessed a race in an underground circuit. It gives Pyro an idea, though, and Surge helps track the race down to where it ends. Pyro's idea to net them a huge sum of cash is for Surge to enter the underground races. Blob expands on that idea by taking a car they've stolen and helping Lance modify it—a special lever is installed in the car that will allow part of the floor in front of the drivers' seat to fold back, allowing to Surge to put her feet onto the asphalt and use her powers to speed the car along at faster-than-possible speeds, "Flintstones"-style. This way she'll be able to win pretty much every race and the rewards that go along with it. Surge and Toad attempt to enter the races, with Toad playing Surge's "agent", the two of them careful not to divulge that they're Mutants. Despite a less-than-stellar performance by Toad, Surge is still allowed in, and over the following weeks proves herself more than worthy of winning the races (though not by so much that it's obvious she's cheating, naturally). We also find out during this time that Pyro and Boom Boom have escalated their relationship to boyfriend/girlfriend, as well as the fact that a mysterious individual only known as "Q" is running the Bayville underground races. Eventually, Surge is doing well enough where "Q" insists on racing her himself, and on a treacherous, decrepit track on a curving pathway cut into the side of steep mountain called "Dead Drop Canyon". They meet up at the assigned gathering place ahead of time, though Pyro's worried since he can't find or contact Boom Boom and he doesn't know why. Eventually "Q" shows up, and it's none other than Quicksilver. As soon as he and the other Brotherhood members recognize each other, Pietro panics and takes off in his own car (which operates under the same "cheater" principles as Surge's car). Quicksilver is having the race of his life as Surge is almost constantly firing lightning blasts at him while they both speed down the curving canyon track. Eventually Quicksilver contacts some of his flunkies up ahead—who still think the normal race is on and that Quicksilver isn't a Mutant—to move a ramp. Going as fast as he can, Pietro speeds the car up the ramp (now up against a wall of the cliffside) and onto the vertical surface of the mountain cliff edge. Surge follows on foot and detonates his car in mid-air, though Pietro manages to fly out of the car and grasp onto a small ledge—Surge manages the same. Pietro is lifted up to the top of the cliff by one of his "flunkies", who turns out to be Mystique, and who injures him and leaves him to Wanda. Mystique then turns into an avian and helps Surge to safety, though she severely reprimands the girl. Still, they're both delighted as far as what's to come—the painful interrogation of Pietro and why, exactly, he had set up a racing circuit here in Bayville.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 5: "Population Bomb"

Jamie is lost in his thoughts on the bus ride home from middle school when his thoughts are literally echoed by someone sitting next to him—and that someone turns out to be another Jamie. Two other duplicates of him are also on the bus, though Jamie never recalled splitting. Confused—especially since he and his new duplicates don't have a psychic connection, which has always been the case before- Jamie absorbs his duplicates back into him. Back at the Institute, Jamie arrives home slightly late to see some of the girls walking out in their softball uniforms, ready to play a game of Mutantball. They invite Jamie to join, who agrees—and who has also developed a fairly recent crush on Rahne, though he's too shy to say or do anything about it. He goes to his room to change, only to find another duplicate of his waiting there, angry that he had been left there all day. Jamie and his duplicate argue with each other, until Jamie finally gets fed up with arguing with himself and absorbs the dupe. At the Mutantball game, Jamie heads to outfield where he usually plays, and misses catching a ball—only to realize that he had, in fact, caught the ball, having duplicated again without realizing it. Jamie thinks to himself that something is definitely wrong, and to talk to the Professor about it after the game is over—only for his duplicate to whisper to him that, in actuality, Jamie's powers are actually working _right_ for the first time, and Jamie suddenly blanks out. When he comes to, Jamie is now in his room, his duplicate across from him with a smug look on his face. Apparently his duplicate absorbed _him_ into himself, and it's now nighttime, the duplicate Jamie having been the only one "conscious" since the softball game, though Jamie instantly recollects what his duplicate did that night. The duplicate insists that HE'S the real Jamie, and this Jamie is the duplicate who suddenly decided "he was the one in charge". In fact, the other Jamie reasons, they could both be duplicates—heck, the real Jamie could have popped out of existence when he first used his powers—with the memories and everything transferring to every duplicate, there's no way to tell. As they argue, more and more Jamies pop into existence in the room, though not through any effort of theirs. As the room starts to fill up with Jamies, it starts to get harder and harder for them to think, until they both slowly slump to the floor, in a stupor. A literal avalanche of Jamies soon pour out of his room, all blank-faced though quickly multiplying over and over again. The X-Men gather in a safe locked room to discuss what to do. Xavier explains that somehow, Jamie's lost control of his powers—and the more duplicates he creates, the larger percentage of his brain is needed to "connect" to all of the duplicates, hence why all of them seem to be practically braindead. If it continues much longer, Jamie's brain will overload and he'll die. It's decided that Jean, Wolfsbane, Berzerker, Cyclops, and X-23 will be teleported into the room next to Jamie's via Nightcrawler and then fight their way "upstream" into Jamie's room, incapacitating him while Xavier is transported to Cerebro so he can make sure they don't injure the real Jamie. The plan goes forward with some effort, though to Xavier's surprise, he finds that TWO of the Jamies in his room are giving off bonafide Mutant energy signatures instead of duplicate ones. The X-Team still accomplishes their mission, though, and knock both of the Jamies out. Later in the basement, the X-Men discuss what to do—even Hank has no idea how there could be two Jamies. For now, they've locked them both up to keep the duplicates from tearing each other apart, and Xavier has placed a mental block in each of them to keep them from using their powers. Rahne manages to have a short talk with the Jamies, and after one of them apologizes for something rather inappropriate the other said to her during dinner (when that Jamie "wasn't there"), Rahne calls Beast and tells him that she knows that the Jamie who apologized is the "real" one. Beast leads her away and softly explains to her that they can't be sure of that, given the two Jamie's identical brain patterns. And even if it was, what would they do with the other Jamie? He certainly wasn't a bad guy, he just acted slightly different in a few ways. It wasn't their right, so as for now, they would have to keep the two Jamies by themselves down here until the duplicates felt better about each other. The last scene in the story deals with a mysterious individual who has witnessed all that has occurred over the night via a satellite feed, and mentions in a log that Jamie has no recollection of their earlier encounter and that this incident proves that, with further fine-tuning, Jamie could become something far more valuable to them than Weapon X ever was…

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 6: "Lines in the Sand"

Rogue wakes Amara up, reminding her that Mayor Kelly is giving a highly-publicized speech for the Mutant Registration Act today and she and several of the other X-Men are going there to protest. Amara, being very shy and ashamed of how she looked ever since she got badly burned by Wanda in "The Brotherhood Means Business", declines, preferring to stay at the Mansion, in bed. X-23 later comes in, forcibly getting Amara up and trying to get her into uniform so she can get down to a session. Amara still refuses, though, sulking. X-23 responds angrily that Amara is being far too selfish and not thinking about the big picture—the X-Men's mission is more important than how Magma looks. Amara threatens to harm X-23, but the clone calls her bluff—Amara knows she could never take on X-23 in combat and win— but Amara still refuses to go with X-23. After the clone leaves, Amara gets a phone call from Tabitha, and heads down to her friend's apartment. At Kelly's Registration speech, the mood is tense, but no one has resorted to any sort of confrontation. The X-Men have teamed up with the local police force to keep an eye on the situation. The debate rages on, until Kelly pulls out his "ace in the hole", and starts to show evidence that the "fireworks accident" that happened in the Season 2 premiere "Growing Pains" was not the result of fireworks, but of a Mutant skirmish during the soccer game—thus implying that even the X-Men cannot be trusted, and will erase the memories of anyone who sees them as they "really" are. Just then an explosion goes off in the parking lot, causing mass panic as everyone starts to scatter. It turns out that the explosion was caused by Tabitha, whose primary reason for calling Amara over was to show her friend her newfound ability to control when her "booms" go off—she had planted them in an empty tollbooth the night before, and had activated them as she and Amara watched the speech on TV. She didn't harm anybody, but it was clear to Amara that Tabitha had just committed an act of terrorism. Horrified, Amara is speechless that even Tabitha would do such a thing. Their argument escalates until an actual fight breaks out, and though Tabitha harms Amara a little, out of anger Amara engulfs Tabitha in a huge fireball, flinging her former friend out the apartment's front window and down a story into her jeep parked on the side of the street. Tabitha is severely injured, burned and unconscious—Amara is immediately remorseful at what she's done, but can do little about it besides call 911. The X-Men, meanwhile, had postulated that Tabitha was indeed behind the bombing from the evidence, and when Beast and the others back at the Mansion hear about the incident that confirms it. Amara meets several of the X-Men outside Tabitha's ruined apartment—she's in stable condition, but still unconscious and unlikely to heal form her burns. Her other wounds will take months to recover from, and she's going to jail anyways. The X-Men try to console Amara, but she has some things to think about, and decides to walk the few miles back to the X-Mansion. Later, X-23 is ready to start a session when surprisingly Amara shows up in-uniform, admitting that the clone was right about there being a larger cause and larger stakes here than just her own selfish desires. Together, they start the simulation, Amara's determination renewed.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 7: "Logan's Legacy, Part I"

At the X-Mansion, X-23 and the instructors are finalizing the paperwork for her first day of public school tomorrow, much to X-23's chagrin—she doesn't see the need for it, though Xavier and the others insist she needs a more balanced view of the world beyond just an assassin's, and to learn societal norms. X-23 chooses the "real" name Laura Kinney, something she picked out of the phonebook that she liked the sound of. Later, X-23 has a recurring dream about her undergoing the Weapon X process a few years earlier, and of her bodyguard/tormentor, Kimura. She wakes up from the dream in a sweat, and is immediately ashamed at herself for such "weakness". Suiting up, she goes down to the Danger Room to try to forget it. Meanwhile, a H.Y.D.R.A. strike team has been getting ready to infiltrate the X-Mansion for an unknown purpose. Deadpool, an insane Mutant with superhuman reflexes, agility, and near-instantaneous regeneration, is the first one to go in—due to the odd structure of his mind, the psychic Mutants can't sense him. Domino, another Mutant with superhuman targeting ability and luck powers, has silently disconnected all the security system's power lines so that they aren't able to detect Deadpool. It's also revealed that Gauntlet is the commanding officer for the operation, having mostly survived his previous encounter with X-23, but now roughly half machine to keep him alive. Both Domino and Deadpool are mercenaries with former ties to H.Y.D.R.A. and currently being paid handsomely to work with their old bosses. As Deadpool infiltrates the Mansion and starts to put the stun disks on the psychics, Domino notices through her scope that X-23 isn't in her bedroom. Gauntlet tells Kimura, X-23's handler and a Mutant with impenetrable skin, to make a bit of a detour. Meanwhile, X-23's idea of ridding herself of the "weakness" is facing a small army of both her Mutant friends and enemies (in reality robotic duplicates) in the Danger Room, determined not to let herself get too attached to anyone. She gets rather injured now and again, but her healing powers help her and she cuts through quite a few of them relatively unscathed. Despite her best efforts, however, she hesitates when she has a chance to gut a robot duplicate of Wolverine. Kimura pulls her back from the duplicate, and though X-23 at first thinks Kimura is a duplicate, her nose soon tells her otherwise—but by then it's too late, as Kimura has X-23 in a head-and-limb lock, with the Mutant robots closing in on her… As that's going on, Deadpool meets up with Domino and Gauntlet in the Mansions' foyer, both of them ready to carry out their objective. Before they can go any further, however, they're stopped by a mysterious individual Gauntlet calls "Maverick", a Mutant who can absorb and redirect any energy thrown at him.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 8: "Logan's Legacy, Part II"

Their plans on the verge of being ruined, Gauntlet hastily sends Deadpool up to quickly put stun disks on the rest of the X-Men before they wake up from the noise from the emerging foyer battle. Meanwhile, he and Domino stay to battle Maverick. Gauntlet quickly gains the upper hand when he starts to use a gun specifically designed to be immune to Maverick's energy-absorption powers. Back in the Danger Room, X-23 painfully dislocates some of her own joints long enough to slip out of Kimura's grasp and tell the Danger Room's computer to change targets from her to her captor. The Danger Room readily complies and the Mutant robot drones begin to attack Kimura. Kimura dispatches most of them with little effort, but it distracts her long enough for X-23 to scamper up to the Danger Room's command center and take direct control of a Surge duplicate, who electrifies Kimura until she falls unconscious. Satisfied for now, X-23 hurriedly exits. Back upstairs, Deadpool has managed to put stun disks on a number of the X-Men, but is starting to lose track. Unfortunately for him, he encounters Shadowcat and Moonstar. Moonstar had managed to short-out her stun disk because of her newfound powers, and then did the same to Shadowcat's disk. Deadpool almost immediately forgets Gauntlet's orders not to kill anyone and chases down Shadowcat, implementing a strategy—since Shadowcat can't breathe when she phases, he continually follows her through the X-Mansion, always either firing bullets or slashing his swords through her to keep her phasing until she finally collapses in the meeting room, her lungs about ready to burst. Just when she's about to faint, Moonstar comes in with help, and Husk momentarily distracts Deadpool long enough for Shadowcat to phase back in and catch her breath. Colossus shows up too, and angrily punches Deadpool through a door and into the foyer. Meanwhile, Domino leaves the fight with Maverick and heads downstairs, her target revealed to be the two Jamies. She tranquilizes one, and the other comes with her reluctantly as they head back upstairs. Back in the foyer, rank-and-file H.Y.D.R.A. agents join the battle against Maverick as Deadpool is thrown through the doors. With the X-Men waking up, X-23 arriving in the foyer, and Domino now having acquired what they came for, Gauntlet decides it's time to leave. Maverick is downed, but not before he utters X-23's name, making her wonder what he knows about her—and then X-23 is temporarily downed as well by a shot to the head from Domino. The H.Y.D.R.A. Mutants and agents retreat to a waiting helicopter just outside the Mansion grounds, taking the two Jamies and the unconscious Maverick with them. Kimura manages to recover in the Danger Room and leaves, too. In the aftermath of the battle, X-23 wants to go after H.Y.D.R.A., but much to her chagrin Xavier insists she stay, as they have no leads, no S.H.I.E.L.D. to contact for clues, and the agents left by air, meaning no scent trails for X-23 to follow, either. Later, at H.Y.D.R.A. headquarters, Gauntlet gives a rundown of their mission to the H.Y.D.R.A. commander, a white-skinned Mutant named "Sinister"….

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 9: "Tearing the Veil"

Kurt wakes up in the middle of the night, needing to use the restroom, and teleports to it—only to find, to his horror, that an entire wall of the bathroom is missing. As he climbs outside into the Mansion grounds through the hole, he sees an utterly bewildering sight—Bayville has all but been destroyed, and a large pyramid with glowing blue letters very reminiscent of Apocalypse's pyramids is in the center of the city's ruins. He discovers Rogue crushed underneath a burnt tree on the ruined grounds, slowly dying. Rogue manages to mumble something about Apocalypse having won and conquered the world in her dying throes. Kurt solemnly buries his sister at the side of the Mansion, then decides to search for his fellow X-Men in the wreckage and chances a teleport to the lower levels. Meanwhile, Xavier is having odd dreams—ones that seem very real—in which he converses with Apocalypse. That morning, the X-Men are unable to find Kurt, and even a Cerebro search can't find him anywhere. This, combined with Xavier telling Beast about his odd dreams, makes them realize they need to call in Forge to see what he makes of all this. Forge hypothesizes that both Kurt's disappearance and Xavier's dreams are related—that the unusually strong solar flare that has been occurring over the past few days has weakened the divisions between time and space, and although it's far from causing some sort of catastrophic "crossover" event, Kurt's teleportation ability, in which he uses another dimension as the go-between, is "malfunctioning" and Kurt is getting stuck in other dimensions "further and further" away each time he teleports. Meanwhile, due to Xavier's remnants of a psychic link to Apocalypse, he is able to contact Apocalypse in his dreams due to the weakened boundaries between times (as Apocalyse is trapped in the cracks of time). Forge builds a device to extract Kurt, but it can only do so much—if Kurt teleports too far away from their dimension, they'll never be able to "reel" the blue-furred Mutant back in. Meanwhile, Kurt has briefly visited the _Wolverine and the X-Men_ dimension, as well as the "classic" '60s X-Men comic book dimension. It is in this latter dimension that Forge manages to contact Kurt via the device and clue him in as to what's going on, urging him not to teleport. However, due to a car being hurled at him Kurt is forced to, and spends two weeks in a dimension where America was never discovered by the Europeans before Forge finds him again and finally brings him home- but not before an American Indian attack leaves Kurt wounded with an arrow through his shoulder. Kurt is taken to the medlab, having grown more of an appreciation for his sister Rogue after seeing "her" die before his eyes. Meanwhile, time is running out for Apocalypse as the solar flare dies down, and he knows it. With all of his strength, he manages to breach the slight time disturbance portal in Forge's basement (created during the events of "Day of Rewinding"), and re-enters the Evo-verse. He is weak, though, having abandoned the Eye of Ages in the realm of time, and the ravages of that dimension have led to most of his cybernetic enhancements having worn off. He only retains a modicum of knowledge of the English language or what happened since he was first imprisoned in the Eye of Ages all those thousands of years ago. Taking some of Forge's father's clothes to hide the parts of him that are still mostly blue and techno-enhanced, he leaves the currently empty house, realizing he needs to learn more about the world and recover before he will ever be able to exact his revenge upon the X-Men.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 10: "Between a Rockslide and a Hard Place"

On Genosha, over the past few months Magneto has gathered a few new recruits—Synch, a tall black impish-looking male teenage Mutant with the power to copy any individual nearby Mutant's powers; Blink, a purple-skinned female young adult with the power to teleport herself or other objects anywhere in the world; and Five-in-One, five identical blond-haired teenage girls with a shared "hive mind" and psychic abilities. They are all having trouble keeping the initial Genoshan structures standing, as strong storms that slam into the island regularly keep ruining them. Magneto needs someone who can enforce and enhance the structures—and sends Five-in-One to his own Cerebro Mark II to find a Mutant somewhere on the globe that can do so. Meanwhile, Lance is abruptly awoken by Wanda, as he is late for a Brotherhood meeting. Hurriedly getting his act together, he meets the others out in their base's main meeting room. Quicksilver, who is now their prisoner, has proven remarkably resilient to torture (even by Wanda), and refuses to outright tell them why he was running an underground racing circuit in Bayville. All they've managed to get from him was that he was doing it to raise money for something. Mystique tells them all that it's clear Magneto is planning something big—he's been silent for far too long—and the X-Men have substantially beefed up security in light of the H.Y.D.R.A. attack as well. Mystique says this leaves them with one option, but before she can say what this is, a loud rumble rocks their base. They go topside and find that a train has derailed from the nearby train tracks. A huge Mutant that looked like he was made entirely of rock was standing there, ignoring the injured and dying people behind him, obviously looking for something, and obviously the one who caused the derailment. Mystique morphs into an owl and flies in for a closer look, but the rock Mutant spots the owl's odd flight patterns and slowly follows her back. A fight begins in which the rock Mutant completely overwhelms the Brotherhood—in addition to superhuman strength he can fire his appendages at people, dive into and out of the ground like water, and get partially smashed apart and then just regenerate his missing limbs/body parts from the ground itself. In short, he IS ground. He manages to knock out or incapacitate all of the Brotherhood members except Lance, who he imprisons in a malleable wall of rock. Lance threatens the rock Mutant, but he forces Lance to listen to him or he'll compress the wall of rock and crush Lance to death. Up to this point in the story periodic flashbacks have been giving showing Lance's early life in an orphanage before he was given into a foster home. He and his "gang" would repeatedly bully a small boy named Santo Vaccarro, and Lance would steal Santo's homework and turn it in as his own. The authorities at the orphanage would do nothing about it, which left Santo understandably furious. One day, he discovered that when he "zoned out" he could actually see himself—his spiritual/mental presence left his body, and he was actually able to "walk" around in this other form and even manipulate objects such as door handles to open for him. Eventually one night Santo confronts Lance, sick to death of being bullied, and he finds out that Lance has been picked for a foster home because of his grades—grades that Santo himself had earned. Furious, Santo pushes a few of Lance's buttons, and Lance, out of anger, causes a huge shockwave of Earth to emanate out from his position, sending Santo careening out of the window of their shared room in the orphanage several stories above ground. Santo apparently dies, and the school is partially evacuated due to the "earthquake"—this is the first time Lance used his powers, and is flabbergasted. During Santo's funeral, after everyone leaves, Lance tries to move the earth merely by willing it, and succeeds briefly before he is forced to leave with his new foster parents. Santo, whose physical body was killed but whose spiritual/mental presence remained, saw Lance do so and got the idea to fashion a body for himself out of earth—the core of which was his stone tombstone with his physical body inside. Santo mostly hid in the earth for the next several years until Mutants became publically known, at which time he revealed himself to town after town after town—all of them unfriendly to his presence. He became increasingly bitter and valued human life less and less, considering none of them really worth much of anything. Also during this time, after being so long in a body made of rock, he found that although he could manipulate rock very well, he was no longer able to "exit" his physical rock form anymore. So, Santo reveals to Lance in the present, this "rock Mutant" is the little kid that Lance used to pick on all those years ago, and takes the codename "Rockslide" as a sort of mockery of Lance's codename. He shows to Lance his partially decayed original form inside his rock body as proof that he is who he says he is, which understandably disgusts Lance. Before Rockslide can do Lance in, however, the X-Men show up, having been drawn to the site by the train derailment. They manage to free Blob and Avalanche from their rock prisons, and Rogue, having absorbed Gambit's powers, blasts Rockslide into a million tiny pieces. Not wanting to start another fight so close to so many victims who need urgent care, the X-Men reluctantly let Lance and Blob carry the other Brotherhood members off (they leave the area temporarily so that the X-Men wouldn't figure out they actually have their base very nearby, and plan to come back after the kerfuffle over the train derailment has died down). Later that night, Blink teleports to the area with Synch, who uses his powers to reform Rockslide, who was unable to reform himself after being blasted into so many tiny pieces. Rockslide is furious over Blink's apparent manipulation of him, as she pointed him in the direction of the Brotherhood, postulating that he would fail in his attempt to down them all. He is ready to kill her, especially since when he blew up he lost all that remained of his former life—the husk of his original body. Blink convinces him to see what Genosha is all about and at least see what Magneto's offering him, and Rockslide agrees, with reservations. Blink teleports all three of them away, leaving no evidence that they were ever there to begin with.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 11: "Nearing the Brink"

Times are tough at the Xavier Institute. Another school year is coming to an end, and Berzerker, Nightcrawler, Rogue, and Kitty are all graduating (Kitty a year ahead and at the head of her class). The status quo is about to change, and combined with the anxiety mounting over what H.Y.D.R.A. has done with the two Jamies, everyone seems rather solemn most of the time. Berzerker is also planning on leaving after school is out, and is leaving early for enrollment at a college in Texas. Kitty and X-23 spar with words in the Institute's kitchen briefly, X-23 being totally disrespectful of Kitty's progress and not understanding what the use of all this "school" is—they should be training in combat, not academia. The argument ends only when Kitty leaves, refusing to talk with X-23 any more about it, but they both know it's not over. Later in school, during lunch, X-23 actually attacks (but doesn't seriously harm or kill) some bullies who threaten her, but she is stopped by Rogue and Husk. Still, it's clear that tensions are mounting at school, as well. Meanwhile, Beast and Storm are called into the local police department because of a disturbance last night—Tabitha is missing from her cell, with no evidence of any kind of forced exit. Beast and Storm are initially befuddled, since Tabitha, still bedridden, is in no shape to escape from a cell—and even if she could, her method of leaving would definitely have left some evidence behind. After looking at security tapes, they see a strange flash coming from Tabitha's cell the previous night. They deduce that someone must have teleported Tabitha out—at first the police chief thinks that Nightcrawler is the culprit, but beyond their certainty that Kurt would never do such a thing, Beast and Storm also point out that the flash made during the teleportation isn't like Kurt's. There must be another Mutant teleporter responsible. The police chief at first doesn't believe them and threatens to lock Kurt up, but Beast calls his bluff, and the police chief backs down. Later, Xavier and the instructors severely reprimand X-23 for her behavior, though she isn't sorry for what she did. Xavier says that he's been more than accommodating, but if one more incident like this occurs, he'll force X-23 to leave the Institute. Meanwhile, Moonstar finds Kitty crying in their shared bedroom, and Kitty finally lets the cat out of the bag—she's tired of all the strife, all the fear, and just everything that's happened lately—she's leaving the Institute for good as soon as the school year's over. Back in Genosha, Magneto welcomes the newest Acolyte into the fold—Tabitha, brought there courtesy of Blink. Tabitha is skeptical of Magneto's promises, but agrees to try the team out when he baits her with being able to eventually fight some of her former teammates—more specifically Amara, who in her eyes betrayed and severely injured her.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 12: "Crossing Over, Part I"

Jamie has had a bad few months. He's been constantly tortured in some sort of H.Y.D.R.A. complex, and they've somehow been able to forcibly and permanently split him again and again and again—apparently they were behind his initial split, having forced him into taking a drug while he was on the way home from the Bayville library one day and erasing his memories of the incident. Over a dozen permanent Jamies now exist, and the number grows every day—and they're fed nothing but awful food and hormones, which has caused them all to grow rather fast and become more muscular despite sitting in a cell all day. Whatever H.Y.D.R.A. is planning, Jamie's sure it's for some kind of weapon. And what's even worse, he's not even sure if he's the real Jamie after all the splits—they all have the same memories up to the point of split. Plus, the head of H.Y.D.R.A.—a pale white Mutant named Sinister—doesn't hesitate to kill any Jamie who puts up any sort of resistance. Eventually Sinister, flanked by several familiar female clawed clones, forces the Jamie in question out of the cell, ready for another painful splitting test. Back in Bayville, another high school graduation ceremony is underway—though Kitty has been "demoted" to a salutatorian despite her grades and denied a speech at the ceremony by the new wobbly, weak-kneed Principal Donaldson. Many of the X-Men feel rather abandoned by her sudden announcement that she's leaving, as well. Instead the new "valedictorian" is Arcade, who surprisingly "gives" his speech to Kitty when it's his turn to speak. Bewildered, Kitty obliges, though not without braving a few angry graduates yelling/throwing objects at her. After the ceremony, Kitty asks Arcade why he let her speak. Arcade replies that he never hated Kitty or the other Mutants, they had just assumed that he did—and that he himself was far too shy to try to make amends after what he had inadvertently done to them in the Season 2 episode "Fun and Games". Arcade wants to try to start things anew with Kitty and her friends, and keep in contact with them even though he's going away to college—but is disappointed when Kitty says she's leaving, too. Later that night, during a post-graduation party, Kitty finds that some of the pieces for a particular board game are missing, and goes up to her room to find them—only to run into X-23, who's holding said pieces. The clone had watched Kitty's speech—mostly about staying strong in the face of adversity—and is angry at Kitty for being what she sees as a hypocrite. X-23 insists that the X-Men's mission comes first, not Kitty's feelings, and to demonstrate X-23 starts to destroy Kitty's boxed-up memorabilia—namely a portrait of her great-grandmother, who escaped the Nazi regime in World War II. This enrages Kitty to the point where she launches herself at X-23, and phases X-23 partially through the floor, while Kitty herself falls down to the kitchen and decides to go tell Xavier about all this. X-23 will have none of it, however, and cuts out the part of the ceiling/floor holding her and completely beats up a surprised and stunned Kitty. Some of the X-Men arrive before Kitty gets too badly injured, however, and help Kitty to the medlab. Xavier angrily tells X-23 that he warned her, and that this was the last straw—she is to immediately pack her things and leave the Institute for good.

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SEASON 6, EPISODE 13: "Crossing Over, Part II"

X-23 is now out in the Canadian wilderness, picking up where she left off in "Target X"—searching for H.Y.D.R.A. installations. She has taken a few provisions with her that the X-Men all but insisted she take—despite their insistence that she also leave—but she doesn't need them, as she shows that she's more than capable of handling the wild by herself. Back at the Institute, the X-Men say their goodbye to Kitty and Ray, who are both leaving with Kitty's parents. Despite Amara's insistence that despite X-23's brunt and sometimes violent manner, she's wiser than she seems, an injured Kitty wants no part of something like that, and doesn't reconsider. Ray and Kitty's best friends watch sadly as the two now former X-Men get in the Pryde's car and drive off. Back in H.Y.D.R.A.'s labs in an undisclosed location, Sinister watches with disinterest as Jamie is forceably split yet again—each split has yielded Jamies that act slightly different, and it was their hope that eventually they would get a Jamie with a completely submissive, loyal personality. He's beginning to lose hope that they will, but this time they finally succeed. Sinister dubs the new Jamie "MM" for "Master Multiple", and tells him about the great plans he's got in store for MM… Later at the X-Mansion, arguments are heating up. Due to Jamie's disappearance and the impending Mutant Registration Act, the instructors are pretty certain that this summer won't be a quiet one. They insist that instead of the students going home for the entire summer break, everyone will only be off for about 10 days, and in rotating periods throughout the summer so they always have a substantial force ready for anything. Naturally several of the students aren't happy over this, and Jubilee and Iceman even threaten to leave. Amara sees that what X-23 has told her in the past may, in fact, be correct—with such a relatively lax, school-like atmosphere, the Institute is starting to break apart under constant duress. Perhaps the Wolverine clone was right in that a slightly more militaristic hand is needed. She tells Xavier this privately, but Xavier is very indecisive—he sees the truth to part of what Amara is saying, but he insists he's never been one to force change. He really doesn't know what to do, here. Back up in Canada, X-23 has run into multiple Jamie clones, who, despite her best efforts, eventually surround her. She attempts to kill one, expecting it to dissipate into thin air like all of Jamie's clones do, but it actually dies like a normal human being would, and only a few of the duplicates surrounding her dissipate as their "host" duplicate dies. A helicopter touches down and Sinister walks towards X-23, insisting she's obsolete. X-23 is very confused, as Sinister acts like he's the head of H.Y.D.R.A., even though to her knowledge Madame Hydra was. Sinister refuses to answer those questions, but does let out a few details. H.Y.D.R.A. is now making permanent duplicates of MM, with each of those duplicates able to produce many, many more temporary duplicates. An army is quickly amassing. X-23 angrily plunges her claws into Sinister, but to her surprise, it doesn't even faze him—he just pulls the claws out, laughing as he instantly regenerates and the army of Jamies shoot X-23 to shreds. Later, at his small shack in the northwestern U.S. near the border, the mercenary Deadpool is watching TV when he notices a huge army coming over the horizon, ever-expanding as it does so. Convinced for some bizarre reason that the Canadians are invading America, he hurries over to his colleague Domino's shack to warn her as well.


End file.
